A VIEW OF THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND INFLUENCE OF THE ARTS HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY FROM THE BEQUEST OF EVERT JANSEN WENDELL Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1840, BY HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. THE aim of the writer of the following pages has been, to compress within a small compass, and present in a perspicuous manner and a cheap form, a mass of information respecting the history of the progress and influence of the Fine Arts, which has hitherto, in this country, been widely scattered in detached fragments, and thus rendered unattainable to the great majority of readers, and especially youth. The cultivation of the Fine Arts, and a general dissemination of a taste for such liberal pursuits, are of the highest importance in a national point of view, for they have a powerful tendency to elevate the standard of intellect, and consequently morals, and form one of those mighty levers which raise nations as well as individuals to the highest point in the scale of civilization. In every age and in every country the cultivation of the Fine Arts has been invariably attended with a corresponding improvement in the social, moral, and intellectual character of the people; and our country is now, happily, the recipient of all the refinements of antiquity embellished with the beauties of modern civilization. When the venerable Bishop Berkeley, in view of the rapid settlement of our country, sung, "Westward the star of Empire takes its way," he might with propriety have added, that such also was |